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Hundreds of Transportation Security Administration officers, who are required to work without paychecks through the partial government shutdown, have called out from work this week from at least four major airports, according to two senior agency officials and three TSA employee union officials.
The mass call outs could inevitably mean air travel is less secure, especially as the shutdown enters its second week with no clear end to the political stalemate in sight. "This will definitely affect the flying public who we (are) sworn to protect," Hydrick Thomas, president of the national TSA employee union, told CNN.
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Hundreds of TSA Screeners, Working Without Pay, Calling Out Sick at Airports
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You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday January 07 2019, @07:23PM
No, the president doesn't have the power to hire and fire as he wishes. He never has:
- The president cannot on his own hire the vice-president. Early on in the country's history, prior to the 12th Amendment, the vice-president was whoever got the second-highest number of votes in the Electoral College, which meant that the early vice-presidents were often political opponents of the president. Now, the Electoral College does 2 rounds of votes, and they choose the vice-president on a second ballot. The president cannot fire the vice-president, either: The only way to remove a VP is for Congress to impeach and remove him, or for the VP to die, or for the VP to resign his office.
- The president doesn't have the power to hire Cabinet officers either: He needs Senate confirmation of his choices, per the "Advice & Consent" clause. Without that, his cabinet consists of "acting" members, who have most but not all of the powers of confirmed members.
- In 1883, the president lost his power to hire and fire low-level employees with the creation of the US civil service system. As far as any claims that the civil servants are working against the president, they've been barred from on-the-job political activity since 1939, so if there was evidence that they were trying to, say, help the Democrats win as part of their official duties, the people involved could be fired and otherwise punished for their activities. They haven't been, which means that the grand conspiratorial claims about them are basically pure fiction and should not be taken seriously. There are similar rules about what military members are and are not allowed to do while on duty, which Stanley McChrystal learned all about the hard way. As the rules currently stand, the president cannot legally fire or punish any civil servant or military member for refusing to break the law or current regulations. This shutdown is basically the Milton Waddams Maneuver writ large: They aren't being fired, they just won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it will all "work itself out naturally" without any confrontations (so management thinks).
All of this has one big message built into it: The order of whose rules count is supposed to be The Constitution, the laws duly passed under the Constitution, the regulations currently in place, and then the president and his political appointees. That way, if the president is a crook, there are still people not involved in the president's crimes around to do boring but useful stuff like ensuring that the latest airplane repair requirements get published promptly and enforced, managing fishing catch limits to prevent over-fishing, and adjusting drawbridge schedules to compromise well between the needs of road and shipping traffic. It also means that a president can't simply declare the laws null and void by directing the executive branch to ignore them. In short, if you don't believe in the concept of civil and military service independent of the president's whims, then you don't believe in a democratic republic but instead believe in some form of authoritarian government.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.